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A 



THANKSGIVING SERMON, 



DELIVERED AT 



1 i0iii's s 



mt\\, i 



Rev. N. p. TILLINGHAST, 



RECTOR. 



ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1365, 



WASHINGTON, D. C. : 

McOII.L & WITIIEROW, PRIN'nORS AND STERKOTVPIiRS 
18(35. 



THANKSGIVING SERMON, 



DELIVERED AT 






Rev. N. p. TILLINGHAST, 



RECTOR. 



ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1865, 



WASHINGTON, D. C. : 

McQILL & WITHEEGW, PR'.NIERS AND STEREOTYPERS. 

1865. 



T51 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Georgetown, D. C, Dec. 9, 1865. 

Rev. N. P. TiLLINGHAST. 

Dear Sik : At the regular monthly meeting of the Vestry of St. John's 
church, held on the evening of the 8th instant, a resolution was unanimously 
adopted, requesting that you will furnish for publication a copy of the eloquent 
and appropriate discourse delivered by you on the recent Thanksgiving-day 
appointed by the President. 

It is with sincere pleasure that we communicate to you this action of the 
Vestry ; and in doing so we venture to express the hope that you will comply 
with the request at your earliest convenience. 
Very truly, yours, 

C. E. RITTENHOUSE, 
H. D. COOKE, 
M. YARNALL, 
JOHN MARBURY, Jr., 

Committee. 



Georgetown, D. C, Dec. 12, 1865. 
Gentlemen : Regretting that the discourse, of which you are pleased to speak 
in terms so kind, is not more worthy of those terms and of the occasion, I yet 
feel bound to place it at your disposal. 

Very truly, yours, 

N. P. TILLINGHAST. 
Messrs. C. E. Rittenhouse, 
H. D. Cooke, 
M. Yarnall, 
John Marbury, Jr., 

Committee. 



SERMOiN". 



" The mountains shall bring peace to the people." — Psalm Ixxii: 3. 

It was one of the loveliest evenings in tlie month of June 
when, on a day and hour not easily forgotten, I began the 
ascent of Mount Vesuvius. The mountain was in a state of 
extreme agitation, and the flames that issued from its summit 
gave it the effect of a vast torch suspended in mid-air over 
the bay and city of Naples. During the earlier part of the 
ascent, what chietiy struck the eye was the marvellous luxu- 
riance with which foliage, fruits and flowers were blended, 
or, rather, heaped together upon the mountain side. At 
every step the vine, the fig tree and the olive entwined their 
branches above, in one triumphal arch, converting the road 
into an endless bower. This was due to the lava beds that 
lay below, and still more to the quickening heat of the fires 
that raged and roared within. These were the forces and 
these the agencies that produced that teeming and luxuriant 
landscape. How much that man calls destructive, both in 
the natural and moral world, is really, in the highest sense, 
creative. In the order of the divine Providence, " beauty " 
springs from " ashes," and " the oil of joy " from " mourn- 
ing." 

Just above this region of marvellous fertility the gentle 
slope changed suddenly to a steep and abrupt ascent. Ashes 
lay piled upon the path like snow-drifts, causing the traveller 
to sink knee deep at almost every step. A gloomy and arid 



6 

plain succeeded, lighted only by the lurid glare of the stream 
of lava that rolled through it, and rugged and deformed with 
dark and jagged rocks that lay heaped on every side in wild 
irregularity. Across this plain sufibcating vapors blew from 
time to time, which made it difficult to breathe. It was a 
scene dismal and desolate beyond description. The dreary 
and monotonous roar of the destroying lava; the poisonous 
gases with which the very air was impregnated ; the terrific 
explosions, deafening as the discharge of a hundred batteries; 
the fiery, deadly showers of white-hot scoriae ; the sights and 
sounds that threw an indescribable gloom over the whole 
region, while night hung darkly over it, banished all thought 
of enjoyment, and filled the mind with dismal and melan- 
choly images. But when the day broke in beauty over the 
mountain summit and the scene below, when the morning 
mists began to float ofiF from the vast and unrivalled land- 
scape, revealing, by slow degrees, the city with its varied 
magnificence, the bay, with its flashing waters and blooming 
islands, the white-walled hamlets sprinkled along the coast 
amidst a sea of verdure — then the magic of that wondrous 
panorama wrought an equally wondrous revulsion in the 
mind of the spectator, causing him to perceive that the tri- 
umphs and the splendors of that lofty vantage ground were 
cheaply won by the toils and terrors, the difficulties and 
perils, that attended the ascent. 

In many a moral crisis, who has not met with a similar 
experience ? "Wlio has not been called, at one time or an- 
other, in the mysterious providence of God, to climb, as it 
were, some dark and difficult steep ; to face some repulsive 
duty; to breathe, as it were, a poisonous air; to turn his 
reluctant steps toward some scene of gloom and trial, where 
hostile and destructive elements, that seemed almost incon- 
sistent with the idea of the Divine benevolence, opposed his 
progress or embittered his reflections ? It does not require 
a very long life to make us familiar, by our own experience, 
with sickness, and sorrow, and anguish of heart. Have you 
not felt, at times, just like a traveller who is compelled to 
toil up some painful ascent, where his footing becomes at 



every step more and more precarious, and his fatigue almost 
insupportable ? Has not the result of such a trial sometimes 
been to place you on a loftier vantage ground, to open to 
you a wider horizon, to enable you to breathe a purer and 
more healthful air ? Thus was the promise fulfilled to you, 
" the mountains shall bring peace." When some strange 
and unwelcome experience (whatever it was) broke in upon 
the established associations of your life, and compelled you 
to a new career of action or of suffering ; when some dear 
tie was broken; when you held your dead child in your 
arms — did you not feel that the Lord was dealing with you 
as the eagle with her brood upon the mountain summit, when 
she " stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over them, spreadeth 
abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings," 
urging them to use their inexperienced pinions, and boldly 
trust themselves to the untried element that lies around and 
beneath them, confident in her watchful eye and bold in her 
protecting love ? The Lord has doubtless more than one 
object in view when He thus deals with us. In leading us 
up by a painful ascent to some high vantage ground, where 
our past life seems to lie far, far beneath us, like a dim and 
faded landscape. He sometimes prepares us for that entire 
change in our plans and habits of life which is often the 
harbinger of a new and happier future. Or, He may some- 
times intend, by leading us up to dizzy heights, where we 
painfully feel our insecurity, to teach us how powerless is an 
arm of flesh for our welfare or protection ; to induce us to 
lean with implicit faith on His Almightiness ; to confide in 
His promises, rather than in human aid; to rejoice in spirit 
when we can say, from the heart, " the everlasting arms are 
beneath me, and the eternal God is my refuge." Is it not 
thus that the promise is fulfilled, "the mountains shall bring 
peace?" 

And as it is with individuals, so may it not be with na- 
tions ? They, too, may be called to tread the steep and 
terrible path that leads up the rugged mountain slope. That 
mountain may be a volcano. The earth may rock beneath 
them as they advance ; the heavens may frown with portents 



8 

of strange and fiery aspect ; they may be called to tread a 
burning soil, and pass tbrough fire and blood, before they 
reach tlieir ultimate and grander destiny. In dcfenec of its 
own laws and of its own existence every government has the 
reserved riyhi to appeal to force. When thai government holds 
the holies and liberties of the human race in its own keeping, as 
a sacred trust for future generations, it becomes a solemn duty 
to guard those liberties from extinction, those hopes from disap- 
pointment. Then, it is true, dark hours come on, like night 
on a volcano's summit; darkness that hides the future; 
darkness, lighted only by the fitful flashes that burst from 
the fiery crater of war. But wherever there is a night there 
is generally, in God's providence, a morning, and the thick 
darkness that reigns upon the mountain top is often but the 
precursor of an unrivalled sunrise. 

" The mountains shall bring peace ! " What music is 
there in that old Saxon *word ! " I could think of the word 
tear," said an eminent divine, " till I wept for sorrow." 
How many could say to-day, " I could think of the word 
peace till I wept for joy?" But, ah ! it is not the sound, it 
is the meaning of the word, that stirs all hearts to-day. For 
what is its meaning ? It means the solemn termination of 
one great epoch of tears and woe ; it means the sublime 
commencement of another of life and light, prosperity and 
joy. It means that the infant, in many a liamlet, will no 
more cling to the mother's breast, scared by tlie stern fire 
of the fiither's eye, the sound and the gleam of arms, the 
hurried and distracted parting. It means that the home- 
remaining bride or sister will no more lay her listening ear 
to the earth, to be resolved whether the distant sound that 
harrows up her soul is indeed a voice from the clouds, or 
the more fatal voice of the cannon of battle. It means that 
the soldier will no more l)e called to struggle in the deadly 
conflict, or to pant beneath the l)laze of summer suns, or in 
the night blast and the sleet of winter storms; that he will 
no more mark the ground with his crimson foot-prints; make 
the snow his couch and the rain his blanket ; die upon the 

* Saxon, " Pais." 



battle-field, or implore death as mercy in the gloomy prison- 
house. It means that the interests of education will no more 
be sacrificed to the cultivation of the trade of arms. It 
means that the wealth which has been employed for the last 
four years in waging a desolating war, will now be spent on 
internal improvements, on commerce, and agriculture, and 
manufactures, infusing a sudden and fresh vitality into all 
the branches of national productiveness. It means that the 
Government which our wise and patriotic fathers established, 
and to establish which they cheerfully endured the privations 
and losses and hardships of a seven years' war, will continue 
to crown the lives of a united people with the blessings of 
plenty, prosperity and peace. 

And here our text meets us, telling us significantly that 
" the mountains shall bring peace to the people ; " that is, 
that the very steepness and difiiculty of the ascent contribute 
to the beauty and certainty of the result. He who would 
tread the mountain's topmost summit, and catch the first 
ray of the morning sunrise, miist be content with a steep 
and rugged path, for wdiat other could lead him to a height 
so great ? Is not this, in some measure, a type of our na- 
tional experience ? By any less rugged path could we have 
reached such a vantage ground ? Our national troubles 
have, indeed, been severe and prolonged ; but without the 
severity and even the prolongation of the trial, would there 
have been such blessedness in the thought and such music 
in the very sound of peace ? "Would our thanksgivings for 
peace have been as fervent as they are to-day ? Should we 
have been inspired with such firm convictions of its import- 
ance, or furnished w^ith such strong guarantees for its per- 
petuity? Had the cloud of war really discharged all its 
lightnings in the space of a few weeks, (as was predicted at 
the outset,) and had those lightnings been far less destruc- 
tive, might not our national future have been darkened by 
a frequent appeal to arms ? Might we not have come at 
last to resemble that neighboring empire, where for many 
years the advent of every new administration has been the 
signal for a renewal of civil strife ? But now we may safely 



10 

anticipate that centuries will roll over us before another civil 
war will desolate our foir fields and fertile valleys. The 
bright years of peace have begun their circuit; and as 
Thanksgiving Day comes round again and again, its annual 
celebration, we may hope, will be a day of unabated gladness 
to our childrens' children. A disturbing element, which had 
proved adverse to political repose in years gone by, is elimi- 
nated from the nation's future. Whatever difterences of 
opinion may prevail in different sections of the country, as 
to the expediency of the measure, all will at least agree that 
there loill he one le§s cause of difficulty in the future, and therefore 
one more guarantee of a stable and enduring peace. Had the 
war ceased with the first campaign, foreign nations would 
never, perhaps, have understood our resources. Now 
they indeed contemplate our national progress with dis- 
pleasure ; but they are very well convinced that they have 
no power to arrest it. In view of all these facts, are we not 
justified in saying that the very depth and severity and pro- 
longation of the difliculties, through which we have been 
called to pass, form to-day our amplest and best security for 
future peace — peace among ourselves and with all nations ? 
Mysterious, indeed, are the divine counsels. God has led 
us b}^ a rugged path to a splendid sunrise. He has taught 
us that " the mountains shall bring peace to the people." 

A nation that, through deep trials and painful experiences 
reaches, at last, 

" That difficult air of the iced mountain top 
Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing 
Flit o'er the herbless granite," 

occupies from that period a new position. She stands on a 
conspicuous vantage-ground. The world's attention is thence- 
forth concentrated upon her progress and her policy. She 
takes rank above historic lands; they, indeed, have a glori- 
ous Past, but what is that in comparison with such a na- 
tion's Future? Below her and before her lies an untrodden 
landscape, rich with the fairest promise of peace, prosperity 
and plenty ; while beyond the clouds that skirt the horizon, 



11 

unljorn ages and generations yet to come crowd upon the 
dim and aching sight, the future possessors of the same fair 
heritage, the destined actors on the same great arena, inher- 
itors of all the happiness and all the usefulness of the pres- 
ent, with the accumulated interest of intervening years. 

We are far, it is true, from having reached these cloud- 
capped summits ; far from having yet attained this sublime 
vantage-ground. There are steeps yet to be scaled, heights 
yet to be surmounted, the wild fastnesses of the mountain- 
top are yet to be explored. Not yet can we fold our arms 
and quietly survey the landscape on all sides to the horizon, 
with the pleasing consciousness that the hour of action is 
past, and that of fruition is inaugurated. We have not 
fairly and fully reached the goal of our exertions, the end 
of all our hopes, our difficulties and our trials. There is a 
task yet to be done. The work of reconstruction remains. 
It has to be patiently prosecuted, and successfully achieved. 
To its complete success the cordial concurrence of both 
North and South seems indispensable. May we not hope 
that this concurrence will be cheerfully rendered? Why 
should it be withheld? Where are the old issues that form- 
erly divided us into sectional parties? Echoanswers "where?" 
They are dead, beyond a possibility of resurrection. Though 
neither a politician, nor a prophet, it does seem to me that 
the hour has come when the nation might say, as a unit 
(if God so wills,) "let the dead Past bury its dead;" and 
start to its feet for a new career of greatness, usefulness and 
glory. Whenever this consummation shall arrive, be it soon 
or late, all hearts will confess that "the mountains have 
brought Peace to the People, " and that the roughness and 
ruggedness of the ascent are richly compensated by the 
beautiful and grand result. The friends of free government 
throughout the world will begin to lift up their heads and 
take courage; the thrones of oppressors and usurpers, no 
matter how upheld by bayonets, will begin to totter to their 
fall; millions of longing eyes will be directed across the 
Atlantic toward this Ark of human safety and of human 
freedom; and millions of voices from every clime and re- 



12 

gion of the habitable globe will hail America as at once 
the teacher and example of the nations. 

But this vision is not yet realized. It still lies in the dim 
and shadowy future. lie whose calm, clear eyes dwelt upon 
it more earnestly than ours; he whose wise brain and loving 
heart were occupied more intensely than ours in consider- 
ing how it might be brought to pass; he Avho never lost sight 
of it day or night, especially during the last few months of 
his mortal career; he, the language of Avhose lips and of 
whose life was " charity toward all, malice toward none;" 
he, to whom, at the very moment of his fall, all eyes and all 
hearts were turned by a common impulse for counsel, sym- 
pathy and guidance ; his lot, alas ! like Israel's leader of 
old, was only to look upon the bright, untravelled land — and 
die. He fell, like Epaminondas, at the very moment when 
it seemed to him, no doubt, that he could do most for his 
country, most for the interests of the human race. By that 
over-ruling Providence that regulates the life of nations not 
less than that of individuals, we see his appointed successor 
standing to-day beside the helm of State, anxious, yet pa- 
tient and calm, like Ulysses in the Odyssey : 

"Placed at the helm he sate and marked the skies, 
Nor closed in sleep his ever-watchful eyes, 
Through the long night he ploughed the restless sea, 

' Till land appeared with morn's returning ray. 
Shadowy and dim arose the distant coast ; 
The woods, the hills in morning mists were lost. 
All lay before him indistinct and vast. 
Like a broad shield upon the watery waste." 

There are times when a nation's welfare (including the 
destinies of unborn millions) seems almost to hang suspended 
on a single life. But let no Christian heart indulge in this 
ilhision ! In his " Proclamation for the day," (whose well- 
weighed words are so worthy of a statesman and a ruler,) 
the President reminds ns that "righteousness exalteth a 
nation, while sin is a reproach to any pcoj^le;" and "further 
recommends that on this occasion the whole people make 
confession of their national sins." Among these sins idol- 



13 

atiy holds imdeniably a conspicuous place ; idolatry of talent, 
idolatry of wealtli, idolatry of power. The popular disposi- 
tion to " make flesh its arm," is a temptation to which we, 
as a people, are peculiarly exposed, and which we should, 
to-day especially, acknowledge and repudiate. Grod has 
solemnly taught us, by one signal lesson at least, that, before 
Him, all human power is but as " stubble and ashes;" and 
that the nation alone is truly safe that can say "the everlast- 
ing arms are beneath us, alid the eternal God is our 
refuge;" the nation in whose van (as before Israel of old) 
marches the guiding and protecting pillar of fire and cloud. 
Oh let us, above all things, be a God-fearing people ! Let 
us learn to look more to divine and less to human power ; 
to lean more upon the everlasting and less upon the finite 
support ; to depend more upon our God and less upon cabi- 
nets and presidents. " Them that honor me I will honor " 
holds true not less of nations than of individuals. What 
thoughtful mind can fail to recognize a divine interposition 
in the very discovery of this continent ? Who can contem- 
plate the serene and steady faith of Columbus, under the 
impatience of his crews, even when that impatience ripened 
into mutinous opposition to the further prosecution of the 
voyage; who can observe him, as the evening darkens, 
taking his accustomed station on the top of the castle on the 
high poop of the Santa Maria, and straining his eager eyes 
along the dusky horizon in search of that great mystery of 
the ocean, in regard to which the Old World of civilization 
and history had no faith, no traditions and no evidence, who 
can consider this and not discard the cold calculations of 
chance, and not consent to see the finger of Providence in 
the career of this illustrious man, and not confess that it was 
no merely human impulse that directed and sustained his 
unconquerable purpose? Who can reflect how long this 
continent was concealed from the inhabitants of the Old 
World by means of the boundless wastes which appeared to 
them a mere watery desert, and consider that it was kept 
thus concealed until the birth of a race of men whose ideas 



14 

and whose characters would fit them for the great arena ; 
men who cherished so intense a devotion to the principles 
of civil and religious liberty, that they did not deem their 
life-blood too costly a libation to be poured out in a cause 
60 sacred; who can observe this and fail to perceive 
in it the direct manifestation of an over-ruling Provi- 
dence ? It has been justly remarked that " our forefathers, 
who laid the foundations of those colonies which are now 
these populous and powerful States, were the only genera- 
tion of men that had existed since the world began who 
would have established such institutions." Here we behold 
the agency of Him whose Eye marks out the career of 
nations, who surrounds them with a felicity of circumstances 
that may contribute to their progress, and accommodates 
their destinies to the grandeur of the designs for which He 
called them into being. Throughout the nation's brief, but 
most eventful history, we may trace (not with presumption, 
but with humble awe) tokens, here and there, of the same 
heavenly interposition. AVhenever darkness has cast its 
shadows across the bright career of our beloved country — 
whenever dangers have gathered around it to threaten its 
independence, its happiness, its unity, whose arm has upheld 
and sheltered us but His, without whose aid the Pilgrims 
had perished, without whose cloud, often and almost 
obviously thrown around him, our Washington had died 
upon the scaffold ? With how much justice, then, does the 
President enjoin on us to-day, " with one heart and one mind 
to implore his Divine guidance." Let us see in our past 
history the assurance, that while we look to him for protec- 
tion, and continue to clierish the principles upon which, 
under his Divine approbation, (as we reverently trust and 
believe,) this newly risen empire was founded. He will still 
make himself known to us, and stay us with His staff and 
comfort us with His countenance. 

Thanks be to Him for the peace which we enjoy to-day. 
It is His own inestimable gift. To Him be ascribed the 
praise that the roar of the fratricidal cannon is silent at last; 



15 

that yonder hills no longer bristle with bayonets ; that the 
effusion of fraternal blood is stopped at length, and forever. 
There is peace in the land to-day. God Himself has willed 
it. Let there be peace in our own hearts! Let the Prince 
of Peace lay his arresting hand upon every unhallowed 
thought or impulse ; every thought or impulse unworthy of 
the hour; every thought or impulse not in perfect harmony 
with the public tranquility that crowns and sanctifies this 
day ©f national rejoicing. Let us resolve to do all that in us 
lies to make the peace that reigns to-day over our country's 
hills and valleys a lasting peace ; a peace not for ourselves alone 
but for our remote posterity. This we may do by cherishing 
in our hearts the kindly feelings, the charities, the mutual 
forbearance, and the mutual encouragements to faith and 
patriotic hope which this affecting occasion so emphatically 
suggests. And if a relic of the bitterness of times long past 
could possibly have survived in any bosom until now, who 
will not agree with me in saying "now is the hour and here 
is the place to bury it? " Shall I tell you one of the most 
cherished wishes of my own heart? It is that we may be — 
as I think I can say we once were, and as I firmly believe 
we are yet to be — a united congregation, "zealous of good 
works;" working all together with one pervading aim and 
impulse for the prosperity of our beloved church. Whoever 
shall contribute toward this great object, in any way, will 
not have "run in vain, nor labored in vain," nor "lived in 
vain." For my own part I regard our newly-established 
church society as a most valuable auxiliary toward this vital- 
ly important object. Let all to whom the cause of Chris- 
tian unity is dear, all who would be glad to see this congre- 
gation cemented and bound together in the sacred bonds of 
Christian fellowship as in days gone by, lend their influence, 
and what will be better still, their personal presence to this 
association. Oh, that the blessed time may soon arrive 
when each one of us will be at his post, all actuated by one 
motive, and laboring for one great object, the temporal and 
spiritual welfare of the church to which we belong. Its 



16 

prosperity is in our hands. "Wlio will labor for it, if we do 
not? Let the language of every tongue be, to-day, in regard 
to our beloved Zion ; 

" If e'er my heart forget 

Her welfare, or her woe, 
Let every joy this heart forsake, 

And every grief o'erflow." 

" For her my tears shall fall, 

For her my prayers ascend, • 

To her my cares and toils be given, 

'Till toils and cares shall end." 



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